Azador staggered back as though struck. His eyes wild, he waved his arms, then pointed at !Xabbu. "It is you—you are crazy! Azador is not crazy." He glared at Sam and her weapon, then at Jongleur. "All of you crazy!" A sob choked his words, "Not Azador!" He turned and ran limping out of the campsite, staggering across the meadow and up the slope of a low hill until he collapsed into the grass and lay there as if he had been shot.

"What have you done?" Jongleur demanded, but with little of his usual commanding tone.

"Saved us, perhaps. Go to him—I think he will not want either Sam or me to come near, but we need him."

Jongleur gaped as though !Xabbu, too, had thrown his arms in the air and begun to gibber. "Go to him. . . ?"

"Damn you, just go!" Sam shouted, waving the broken blade. "We were ready to leave you behind two days ago. Do something useful for a change!"

Jongleur appeared to consider several responses, but only turned his back on them and stalked off toward the fallen figure of Azador.

"That felt good!" said Sam. Her heart was still speeding.

"But Jongleur is an enemy that must be managed carefully," !Xabbu told her. "It is like handling a very poisonous snake—we should not tempt bad luck."

"How did you know? About Azador? And who is he? What is he?"

The confrontation over, !Xabbu seemed to shrink a little. "What Azador is, I cannot say for certain—not in a place as confusing as this network. But perhaps he is like the woman Ava we have all seen, or that boy that Jonas met—someone who drifts from world to world in this network, uncertain of his identity. Certainly he is not acting like the Azador I met before, who was very full of himself, too, but mostly cold and superior. And Jonas described an Azador who hardly spoke at all."

"You mean they're all different people?"

"I don't think so. But as I said, in this place, who knows?" !Xabbu seated himself beside the fire. "However, it is not who he is that is important now. Rather, it is where he has been."

"I don't understand."

!Xabbu gave her a weary grin. "Wait and see. Perhaps I will be correct again in my guesses and you will think me a very clever man. But if I am wrong, it will be less shameful if I have not bragged about what I think I can do. What comes next will be difficult."

"You seem different, too," Sam said suddenly. "I don't mean like a different person, but . . . but more confident."

"I have had time to listen to the ringing of the sun," he said. "Even though there is no sun here. To speak to the grandparent stars."

Sam shrugged. "I don't know what any of that means."

!Xabbu reached up and patted her arm. "It does not matter, Sam Fredericks. Now, let us see if we can work some magic on Mr. Azador."

"And what will you do if I don't cooperate?" Azador demanded. "Stab me with that sword?" He spoke with such an exaggerated tone of outrage that for a moment Sam could not help wondering if he might not be another stolen child hidden inside the shape of a grown man.

"It's tempting," she said quietly, but was quelled by !Xabbu's stern look.

"We will do nothing to you," the small man said. "We will simply go back to waiting for this world to disappear around us."

Jongleur stood a little apart, watching. He had regained his usual lizardlike reserve. Sam did not know what he had told the mustached man to bring him back, but she supposed she was grateful for it.

"I am in the hands of madmen," Azador said.

"That could be," !Xabbu replied. "But I promise no harm will come to you." He lifted his hand. "Give me your shirt."

Azador scowled, but stripped it off. !Xabbu took it and stood behind him, then rolled it and tied it around his eyes like a blindfold. "Can you see?"

"No, damn you, of course I can't!"

"It is important. Do not lie to me."

Azador waggled his head from side to side. "I can see nothing. If I break my leg, I will see the same happens to you, even if you gut me."

!Xabbu made a noise of irritation. "Nothing will happen. See, I will walk beside you, Sam on the other side. Come, Mr. Azador, you have said often enough that you are brave, resourceful. Why are you afraid to walk with your eyes covered?"

"I am not afraid. But the whole thing is stupid."

"Perhaps. Now the rest of us will be silent. We will walk beside the river. You will continue, please, until you feel it is a good place to cross."

Sam was puzzled but kept her peace. Even Jongleur appeared to be grudgingly interested in the experiment. They led Azador down to the last firm ground before the river-bank, then turned upstream.

They walked for a long time without talking, the quiet broken only by Azador's frustrated curses when he tripped on some unseen obstacle. In places the reed thickets grew so dense that they almost stumbled into the river; in other places the meadowlands stretched before them so openly that Sam felt her trust in !Xabbu's insights diminish. There was nothing but river and grass for as far as she could see. What difference would a man in a blindfold make?

After a while, Azador's reflexive grumbling began to die away. He moved like a sleepwalker now, walking stolidly forward, resting when the others rested, not even complaining when they wandered into mud. She heard him murmuring, but could not hear the words themselves.

Even the quality of his attention began to change as the first hour rolled into a second; a stillness came over him, and from time to time he stopped and tilted his head as though listening to something the others could not hear.

But by the time the light began to change, darkening just perceptibly as the middle of the day passed, they still had not found anything.

Look at us! Sam thought. Her feet hurt. She was hot and sticky. She felt a strong urge to lie down and let whatever was going to happen just happen, and had only kept herself moving during the last hour out of loyalty to !Xabbu. Azador's right—this is stupid. Four people stumbling along the river, looking for something when we already know its not here.

They were just making their way out of another whispering crowd of rushes when they saw the bridge.

Sam gasped. "But how. . . ? We've been here before! There wasn't . . . we didn't see. . . . Dzang!"

It was narrow, little more than a wall of piled stones with arch-shaped holes to let the river flow through, but it was wide enough for them all to walk across side by side. Most importantly of all, it stretched all the way to the meadows on the river's far bank—or seemed to, in any case: the other end of the bridge was obscured by low mists.

"You may uncover your eyes," !Xabbu told Azador.

Alone of them all, Azador showed no surprise, as though he had in some way seen the bridge already. Nevertheless, there was a frightened glint to his stare, and after a moment, he turned away. "I . . . I do not want to go there."

"We have no choice," !Xabbu said firmly. "Come. Lead us over."

Azador shook his head, but reluctantly moved toward the near end of the span. He hesitated for a moment before stepping up. !Xabbu followed him, then Sam and Jongleur. Sam marveled at the stony solidity of the thing—she knew they had passed this very spot only a day or so before, but no bridge had stood here.

Azador took a few steps, then stopped. "No," he said, his voice oddly distant. "First we . . . we must say something."

They all waited expectantly.

"Gray goose and gander,"

Azador murmured at last, his voice heavy with some emotion Sam could not decipher,

"Waft your wings together,

And carry the good king's daughter

Over the one-strand river."

After a moment he looked back at them, then stepped out onto the stone path above the glinting, slow-moving waters. Sam was disturbed to see that the man's eyes, hidden for so long, were now wet with tears.